Dreamless sleep. Just a pitch black, instantaneous transition between Blackreach and here.
Opening his eyes, puzzled and sleepy, Keram-Rei abruptly jumped to his feet. This wasn't good, this wasn't where he'd fallen asleep. He didn't panic – he just focused on the main problem.
Where the fuck am I?!
Hey, don't ask me. This place feels strange.
The darkness surrounding him was just as heavy as his breath while he got hold of his sword. He waved his blade around knowing his blindness made it fairly pointless, but it did offer him some small comfort. When nothing pounced on him, he held up his left hand and a ball of light hovered to the roof. The orb revealed a completely metallic room: dull, gray, odorless, and shining. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about it, nothing stood out. It perfectly reflected the bright blue light which shone on walls, floor and ceiling alike. There was only a minuscule problem, apart from the change of scenery.
He hadn't cast any spell.
The Dragonborn pointed the tip of his sword at the throat of the female Argonian before him, his fangs bared at her. "Where am I?" He growled softly, trying to analyze her appearance, but the spell was nearly blinding now. He could see… red scales, dark robes, and a hint of horns. Could she have anything to do with this?
"I was trying to figure that out myself." She replied with a hint of superiority he instantly disliked. Her red eyes were narrowed on him as she lowered the light's intensity, sparkling with curiosity and sizing him up from head to toe. "I'm sure you are just as puzzled as I am. I can understand that. What I cannot understand, however, is why you are pointing your weapon at me." She nodded at the blade ever-so-slightly. "So, if you would be so kind as to take your blade away from my throat…"
Keram-Rei stood still in doubt, but he ultimately sheathed his broadsword and set his gaze on her. She wore the robes of an Archmage, dark gray and delicately trimmed with white fur. Satchels, bags, and various horns hung from her hips, and it was quite impressive how they weren't helplessly entangled with each other. She had an intricately designed staff in her hand, unlike any he'd ever seen. It was carved from black wood, gnarled and obviously ancient - but extremely refined and polished at the same time. The staff was covered in glowing runes, with colored crystals set at its tip and bottom.
With one last huff of annoyance, she'd taken off her hood revealing soft, delicate features. Small, ram-like horns grew at the sides of her head, with brown feathers in between. There were no spikes whatsoever on her face. She was almost as tall as him, but elegantly slender with graceful movements, like he'd always imagined a true mage. Not the scrawny men and women he was now used to talking to. Only, those rarely rolled their eyes as annoyingly as she did.
And he couldn't deny she was fairly attractive when she did it, too.
Come on, dark room, you're alone. Tear her clothes off while she isn't watching. Maybe she'll like it.
Keram-Rei shook his head and grimaced. What was wrong with him today?
There were other, far more important things to focus on. Now that he thought about it, the robes were identical to those he'd been given by the College of Winterhold, when he himself had become Archmage. The trim, the fabric, the decorations themselves…
After a moment's reflection, he just shook his head. It was nothing, the very moment he'd received the Archmage robes he had sold them to the first trader of magical items. He'd never liked robes. No real protection, and they always got in the way. They looked good on her, too. I wonder how she's found them…
They're made specifically for a female, dumbass. I don't like this.
"Keram-Rei, honored to meet you." He introduced himself with a bow. As long as it didn't go past that, he was fine. "I'm sorry, waking up in a metal room with another person was… shocking, to say the least. If I may ask, what's your name, milady?"
She examined his every move with that unnerving curiosity, then cleared her throat. "My name is Screaming-Eagle. And do not call me 'milady'." She narrowed her eyes. "I hate it."
Keram-Rei chuckled and nodded slightly. He had the funny little feeling she was just as socially awkward as him. "Glad to drop the fanfare, Screaming-Eagle. Nice to meet you."
Screaming-Eagle muttered something about males and stupid grins, then turned to examine the cold walls all around them. Now that he looked at them, he noticed it was a tiny room, more of a cell than anything, but longer than usual. The fact that, of all the possible people, a female Argonian had ended up in there surely didn't help. Especially with said Argonian being as nice as she was, and having such a well-proportioned… backside.
And the burning sensation he felt in his chest wasn't comforting, either. Strangely enough, he'd already felt it, but... he knew it was tied to something he'd done in the last two years, he was sure of it, but he couldn't figure out what…
"How does this all feel to you?" He tried asking. As long as I keep to business and immediate questions, maybe I'll have a chance.
"Strange, and unlikely." She said through gritted teeth. Quite the brusque answer.
He scowled at her back. "Why so edgy?"
She didn't even turn around, she only snorted. "None of your business."
She's falling into your arms, I can tell.
"Oh, come on, really?" Keram-Rei ranted in disbelief at both. "I just asked a question about you, not to show me your-"
"Don't speak any further." Screaming-Eagle silenced him, her eyes darting all around and ultimately fixing right into his. "Can you hear it? No? Then don't speak. Hush. Quiet."
Before he could comment, a mechanism hissed right in front of them, and she quickly undid the light orb. Screaming-Eagle moved to his side, her staff glowing faintly in her hands. The Dragonborn held his broadsword at the ready, knowing that hissing steam never meant anything good. They were in a Dwarven ruin, after all…
Or were they? Now that he thought about it, the Dwemer never used steel to build anything, only chiseled stone and their bronze-like alloy.
Perhaps it was a location where the Dwemer had found vast reserves of iron and could produce steel better and more efficiently. But no, it didn't add up. Dwarven buildings, even when abandoned for four thousand years, were covered in decorations, etchings and bas-reliefs. This place was bare.
At least you're starting to think, idiot.
A door slid up away from the floor, letting orange flickering lights and a piercing noise flood the cell through a thick mist. In the blink of an eye, a dozen towering men in black armor rushed inside with the stomping of heavy boots on the ground and the whir of machines, pointing what looked like dark staves at them. Except, they weren't staves. These things were hollow like the blow-guns of the Imga. And by the way these people pointed them, they reminded him of heavily-customized crossbows, especially with the grip and...
He sighed.
Trigger.
He wasn't too interested in seeing how far he could push his armor.
They made very little sense to him – especially how he couldn't see any bolts or mechanism – so he moved on to analyzing their armors. Black and dark blue, visibly identical, heavy plated with menacing helmets, and screened glass eye slits.
They looked bulky, mostly made of edges meant to deflect arrows and blows, and surely taller than either him or Screaming-Eagle. Seven feet easily. Tubes and a vent were connected to their heads, plus a strange, circular glass panel above their foreheads... and countless more useless appendages and trinkets of all shapes and forms.
Or useless to him, at least. He didn't know what sort of threat they posed, but it had to be fairly high. The armours were dotted with pouches and bags, pineapple-like things and sleek cases… all topped with a curious device on their wrists. It glowed green, with various knobs and buttons on it.
How in Oblivion did those things glow?
One of them stomped his foot on the ground to have their attention. He stood out amongst the others - surely their captain, with his completely matte black armor (save for the yellow '24' on his chest) and a larger weapon than the others. A vaguely triangular box fixed underneath it, connected to the strange instrument by a thin belt with small brass-like bolts fitted inside. It didn't take a genius to figure out these weapons could shoot, and quickly, judging by the loading system. They looked too advanced for Nirn, and too utilitarian and blocky to be made by Daedric hands.
Where in Oblivion are we? Keram-Rei repeated to himself, grimacing as he looked at the guards. The only thing common to all of them was the large '24' painted on their chest plates, maybe to signal their Legion, or unit, or… or whatever their assigned post was.
You've already asked.
They surely weren't Dwemer, no. Even with these massive armors. If the First Era books he'd read were right, they were a little too short to be Dwemer. Khajiiti and Argonians were ruled out. Elves always had a nifty way to hide their ears into their armors – which were much more decorated than these. Orcs would have left the helmets open, to either see and feel the bloodshed… or keep their tusks on.
These were humans.
"Welcome to Vault 24!" A shrill voice piped up from behind the armored men. A short woman pushed aside two of the guards and entered the room. She looked like an Imperial in her mid fifties, with blonde hair and a cold, blatantly fake smile plastered across her face. Some sort of glass lenses held by a black, thin frame were pulled over her dull blue eyes. She might have looked nice at one point in her life. A gray dress of an unknown fabric but of far too short length fell to barely under her knee. Only black leggings covered her legs down to black, polished shoes.
Why was she wearing that? Nothing to do with decency - more with sanity. Keram-Rei narrowed his eyes on her obnoxious face. The cell was cold, and yet there she was, smiling and greeting with those clothes. He saw there was a strange vest over her chest, dark and covered in straps. It was thick and heavy-looking, some sort of… cloth chestplate.
Wait.
Cloth chestplate?!Who would even consider using something that useless?
He didn't know about Screaming-Eagle, but he was feeling very skeptical towards anything this woman wanted to tell them.
"We have been waiting for you for centuries, and finally our waiting is over!" The woman continued, causing him to grimace. Her voice was grating enough to poke a hole through his brains. "And to be rewarded with the presence of not only one, but two of you! My predecessors at Vault-Tec have given me very specific instructions on how to treat two important guests such as-"
"Prisoners." Keram-Rei muttered through gritted teeth and narrowed eyes. He cleared his throat at her quizzical look. "Not 'guests', prisoners."
"What?" The short human yelped, and he noticed her fake smile was starting to fade. Her little speech had been shattered by just one unplanned interruption.
Oh, you've got to love politicians. You break their little speech, and they stop working.
"You heard him." Screaming-Eagle picked up, still studying their captors with her eyes as if trying to catch every possible detail. "We aren't foolish, you probably intended to incapacitate us or knock us unconscious in case we chose not to follow your orders willingly. And then what would have awaited us? Experiments? Torture? Tests? Death, even?" She smirked. "No, two bodies would be far less useful than two living subjects, any scholar knows that."
"No, no, I don't know what you're talking about!" The woman squeaked in an entirely different tone, rage making its way over her pristine face. "Vault-Tec has never intended to-"
"Yes, definitely experiments, not interested in what other lies you have to spit." Keram-Rei interrupted once again, grinning just obnoxiously enough to drive his point home.
"You dare?" The woman screamed, clenching her fists on her sides, her face going a nice shade of red. "You dare?!"
"Calm down, and simply let us go." Screaming-Eagle sighed with a shake of his head. "We mean you no harm, just…"
Keram-Rei lost interest in the exchange. He took a step forward and fiddled with one of the men's curious weapons. "How does this weapon work?"
"Want me to show you, lizard?" The guard blurted out, a hint of malice in his voice. "Look into the barrel, I'll show you."
You aren't that stupid. Wait, are you?
"Oh, I'll find it out by myself." He finally replied, smiling. "Don't you worry."
He grabbed his Dragonbone sword more comfortably and rammed it into the man's chestplate. The blade almost got caught into the unknown material, but he wrenched it free of the ribs and metal. His victim fell to the ground between gurgles as a pool of blood formed beneath his corpse. The clang was deafening – just how heavy was that armor?
Behind him, he heard and felt Screaming-Eagle's magic crackle like lightning, and so he instinctively rolled backwards, ending up right at her side.
It was then that he noticed something.
Normally, he didn't really pay any mind to the aura of Magicka around Nirn. It was always there, and it would've always been, so there was no reason for him to think about it too much. There were thousands, if not tens of thousands of true mages. Many more could only cast the most basic of spells, and almost the entirety of Nirn had that little well of Magicka deep inside of them. It flowed through the air from the stars and, as such, every magical individual drew power from the immense reserve of Magicka all around them.
Now, though, there wasn't – and had never been – any mage besides him and Screaming-Eagle. And if there were mages, they were so few and far between that he couldn't feel them even if they stood right in front of him. The Magicka aura of… wherever they were was pure, untainted.
Ugh… want me to break it down for you? This means spells work better. What kind of mage are you, exactly?
"Keram-Rei?" Screaming-Eagle deadpanned to his right.
Keram-Rei turned towards her with his best dumb grin. "Yes, Screaming-Eagle?"
"You're the biggest idiot I've ever met." She growled.
"OPEN FIRE!" Their captain roared with an echoing voice, and all his men pulled the trigger at once.
It was as if time had stopped flowing, just so the two could admire the scene.
The guards' weapons blazed with the roar of thunder. They fired dozens and dozens of small projectiles every second, the two Argonians in their sights. Some, the slowest, sprayed pellets in a wide array, others thundered and fired a continuous and literal rain of metal towards them. Some bolts looked smaller, others larger, but the difference was barely noticeable.
More of the devices shot pure waves of red light, burning hot, with the promise of reducing their targets to a cinder, while one appeared to spit glowing green goo at them. The captain's own weapon kept firing on and on, the belt on its side feeding it with more of the strange projectiles, far smaller and faster than any normal bolts.
Then, in the span of fifteen seconds, it was all over. The empty shells and their boxy containers lay on the ground, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them littering the metal floor along with the corpse of that unnamed guard, left bleeding and forgotten.
But not theirs.
Screaming-Eagle thumped her staff on the ground, and her azure barrier faded. More than a thousand incandescent projectiles hit the ground simultaneously, clanging at the contact with the floor below. Minute trails of smoke rose and twirled from each red-hot, squashed piece of metal.
What sort of spell could do something like that? Sure, he knew some shielding spells against magic, but… these things didn't have one bit of magic in them.
I can't believe it, a… a physical barrier? It's been so long since I've seen someone use that!
The Dragonborn gave a look to Screaming-Eagle, who nodded briefly in response, and he turned back to the paralyzed men in black armor. He gave them a spine-chilling smile, careful to bare every single one of his razor-sharp fangs. He barely reached their shoulders, but oh if it felt good to scare them.
"Lovely." He growled, tilting his head in curiosity like an hellspawned beast. Three or four men shuddered visibly. "Our turn now."
Keram-Rei closed his hand as he focused on the heat of Magnus and the veins in his arms grew warmer and warmer, then opened his palm towards one of his targets. His firebolt hit a guard square in the chest, melting straight through armor and flesh as the man fell face-down without uttering one sound. Everyone froze in horror, staring at their fallen comrade as they clutched their weapons tighter.
Yes, awful with females - but in a fight? Not so much.
With a snort of either contempt or amusement, Screaming-Eagle tilted her staff and clenched her fist, another human screaming as his armor started bending and crumbling. Accompanied by the snapping of his bones and the rending of his flesh for one endless minute, his clunky and seemingly indestructible protection proved to be nothing more than wet paper to her magic. He'd seen far worse, but… those screams, and the blood… it was disturbing. He wasn't going to forget it any time soon.
Blood filtered through the crushed ball that was now the soldier's corpse, a harrowing display of meat and metal fused together. A pool of the guard's blood spread rapidly beneath him.
Keram-Rei charged and bellowed a furious battlecry, aiming for the weak neck joint and beheading one of his captors. His thoughts drifted to the snow-capped peak of High Hrothgar, and he slammed an ice shiv through another's eye slit. While Screaming-Eagle reduced two more of them to smoldering ash with bolts of lightning, their suits of armor remained miraculously standing, then crashed to the ground and dented the floor.
To the left, idiot!
One of the guards tried engaging him with a glorified knife, which the Dragonbone blade broke in half as the man attempted to block the first strike, the second one splitting his helmet and frail skull in half. This time, his blade was stuck. No matter how hard he pulled, it just didn't want to get out.
Another guard overcame the shock and brought up his own weapon and aimed it at Keram-Rei's head. He swallowed, and couldn't help but look down into the black tube. Everything seemed to slow down. Even faced with imminent death, his brain made him notice how smooth that part of the weapon was. Underneath it was the grip, which the guard pulled back with an ominous clack. A small, black cylinder flew out from a side of the gun. There was a… word there, in white letters, probably a name: Remington.
The guard gripped the weapon tighter and, before Keram-Rei could move, it…
Fell.
The black armor began convulsing wildly, with joints, plates and bones audibly cracking inside the armor. A scream of surprise and pure agony came from the helmet. It went on for a few seconds, until his head turned backwards and the neck snapped with a sickening sound.
The Dragonborn freed his weapon and nodded his shocked thanks to Screaming-Eagle, who was holding her staff sidelong in both hands.
Then a troll rammed into him.
His sword flew out of his hands as he slammed against the nearest wall, pinned down by another wall – matte black, with a hint of yellow. A large, powerful hand grabbed his neck with a grunt of effort, and he felt his windpipe slowly being crushed under the immense pressure. No mortal could summon that sort of strength, and yet…
He was going to die soon, so he looked into the mirrored eye slits, back into his blue eyes, and grinned weakly. He was going to die, he felt his essence slowly fading away… and focused exactly on that. There was still a little breath in him.
"Fe… Feim Zii Gron." He whispered.
Keram-Rei fell down to his knees, and took a few seconds to breathe again and massage his aching throat. That fucker was strong, he had to give him that. He cracked his neck to set his vertebrae back into place, jumped to his feet and took his sword back to sheathe it. His opponent turned around and looked at his empty hands. It didn't take a lot of imagination to see his face underneath the helmet.
He joined his hands on his chest, calling for all his outrage at the thought of dying and mustering his anger. A ball of fire began to grow between his fingers, hot, hot enough to melt through a Dragon's scales and bones had he been on his precious Nirn – there, it would've deformed Orichalcum at best.
His Ethereal Form gave way to his corporeal form.
He unleashed the spell.
The fireball left his hands with as much speed as he could imbue it with, and when it hit the man it didn't pass through him, so much as it engulfed him. Unlike his foe, he'd been merciful. The guards' captain had certainly died in the first five seconds. After that, his fire magic just ate away at the armor and the body beneath it, leaving only a puddle of red-hot metal in place of the towering man.
Behind him, someone snorted. He heard the much lighter bark of a small weapon, and something bounced off his backplate. He turned towards the source of the sound, a brow raised in puzzlement.
"Incompetents." The Overseer huffed again, disgusted, and aimed at him. "I'm going to do this myself, it seems."
They had slaughtered her men right in front of her eyes, and the only thing she had to say was that the guards who had died for her, fighting to the last against an unknown enemy, were incompetents?
What a bitch.
The woman unloaded her weapon into his chest (mostly into the walls) as Keram-Rei relentlessly marched towards the responsible for all this. Each and every projectile that struck home ricocheted off his breastplate, until she finally ran out of ammunition.
With a dash forward, he grabbed her by the throat and slammed her hard against the wall. Helplessly, she tried to wriggle away and whimper in pain. He tightened his grip menacingly, and she stopped at once, her eyes silently pleading him to let her go. He could feel the pulse of her neck weakening, her breath not passing, her life slowly but surely leaving her…
"L-listen, I-I'm sure we c-can sort t-this out…" She spluttered, smiling tensely. "M-m-maybe…"
"Neither of us is interested, you heartless monster." Screaming-Eagle responded, although now she sounded coldly aloof, not simply haughty like before. "The only thing you can give us are your memories, everything that could be useful to us: information, knowledge, abilities. And we don't need your permission for that."
He eased his grip a bit. They would've needed her alive for that.
The woman began murmuring something unintelligible as he and Screaming-Eagle laid a hand each on her head, and their eyes locked.
"Rip them from her skull, leave her nothing but an empty husk, devoid of any emotion or intelligence." Screaming-Eagle said, impassive. "Make her suffer."
Keram-Rei grimaced. Nobody deserved that… with her nod, though, they both cast their spell.
Ignoring the piercing screams a few breaths from him, a steady flow of images began to crowd the Dragonborn's mind, giving him an instant migraine which threatened to worsen with every second. But that didn't matter. All that mattered was understanding what had happened, where they were, how they'd gotten there, and most importantly: why.
Pictures, meaningless at first, confused, unfocused… but then they slowly came into focus.
He knew it was going to be good when a part his beliefs and knowledge were shattered before his eyes. The sky wasn't just the sphere of Aetherius. It was far larger than that. The stars could be reached, their worlds touched, and eventually even conquered! The sky was immense, and it wasn't just a picture – it was the universe. Magic wasn't Magnus's residue, maybe it was the very force that set everything in motion! Oh, it was so amazing… the knowledge, the… the everything!
Alas, then came the rest.
Although he'd half expected the situation to be bad, Keram-Rei was shocked. This wasn't Nirn anymore, it was a planet called 'Earth', inhabited only by the races of Man. He had visions of science, medicine, technology, economy, all the different lifestyles and a society completely alien to his. Vehicles, money, communications, buildings… his brain was exploding.
This world was pure hypocrisy. These people were so advanced and yet so backward, so conservative and yet so immoral and savage… here, money mattered more than anything, even more so than on old Tamriel itself. Everyone watched, everyone knew, everyone suspected… and nobody did a thing to stop it, to change it all.
Everything went downhill. Epidemic diseases, food and water shortages across the… the United States and the rest of the world, more water shortages, resource wars – petroleum wars! Why not make a damn exchange for it? Why not go over China's policies and work for a brighter future together? Why kill each other over dead animals?
Then came the dreadful and deadly weapons: rifles, shotguns, machine guns, laser and plasma weaponry. It was an era where armies had no need to clash on the battlefield, where everything was governed by tactics, preemptive strikes from afar with jets, tanks, artillery, missiles. And then yet more resource wars, more food and water shortages that led to riots and power-armored soldiers to control the population, the arms race for more and more nuclear warheads…
War broke out. China invaded Alaska. An all-out war for the last oil wells, destined to end like the Middle Eastern crisis. More military researches, and the United States mobilized their forces into China, with top-notch power armors. Pictures of soldiers, of weapons, of uniforms, of vehicles, of mounds of corpses…
A treaty, finally. Peace. Weeks passed in relative peace, no conflicts, lesser tensions, maybe-
October 23, 2077.
For the first time in years, he felt fear.
Keram-Rei was beset by the horror. Millions of people turned to ash in the blink of an eye, and hundreds of millions more doomed to die from the subsequent fallout. Raiders and hideous beasts could be the only leaders of the world Earth had become, whateverit had become... if it had become anything other than a lifeless rock.
Two hundred and four years before this day, the entire human race had been brought on the brink of extinction, and he could only imagine what sort of barren world would await them beyond the Vault door. Had civilization even survived out there, or was it all ruled by bandits and warlords? Or worse, were they all dead? There had to be more places to hide, other than the Vaults. And even then most of Vault-Tec's twisted experiments were supposed to open after no more than twenty years. But still...
He cared little for Adelaide Bradford's miserable work as Overseer and her little reign of terror under Mount Tipton, Arizona. A loathsome bunker, where everyone was supposed to be her puppet and she their queen, much like some 'Alphonse Almodovar' of experiment 101. A recent failure, from the automated reports she'd received some four years ago. Divines, punishments for… for not returning books or not washing one's teeth? People executed for openly speaking against her?
The Dragonborn managed to wrestle his mind away from the Great War and accept the idea of being stranded on a wasteland of a world.
And still, Vault 24's purpose was nowhere to be found in her mind. There was no way of knowing why he'd been dragged there from Nirn alongside Screaming-Eagle. No information, not a bit of knowledge… nothing, nothing, nothing, just nothing. He snarled in vexation.
His headache was nigh unbearable, but now things had gotten clearer – if not why or how they'd been brought there, at least they knew where and when. The functioning of things, the names, the everything was falling into place. They were in a testing cell, where the Vault's experiments took place, with guards in power armor wielding either energy weapons or guns and with Pip-Boys on their wrists. It was a lot to take in, but he'd taken it in all at once. This would've remained in his head for… pretty much forever.
Keram-Rei let the Overseer's body fall to the ground, snorting in disgust as he did so.
Oh boy! That was intense!
Screaming-Eagle, on the other hand, looked far more shocked than he was. She was trembling visibly, and her staff looked like it could've slipped from her hands at any second. Of course, being a mage of her caliber, she had probably spent her entire life on books and magic treaties, on how the Divines had created everything… he'd had the advantage of being a bit of a free thinker, but her? He doubted it.
"Are you alright?" He tried asking, and carefully laid a hand on her shoulder. Things could've gotten real bad, real fast. He didn't know her, he couldn't tell what she could do in front of all this. She was a mage, a true academic scholar, just the first notions might've been too much for her.
"I am not alright, Keram-Rei." She hissed, and he was glad to see her angered with him. Anger was good. It would boil down, eventually. He didn't want her to have a nervous breakdown at the moment."Nobody can be alright after seeing what we've seen in no more than a minute, you immense idiot!"
Without the slightest warning, Screaming-Eagle slapped him. It wasn't so much the strength that surprised him (it had been pretty pathetic, really), but rather her unprovoked reaction. She shook her head and began regaining her stiff composure. Without even a glance in his direction, she stormed off into the other room with an irascibility he'd rarely seen.
Oh, I already like her.
It all left him grimace with a perplexed expression on his face and a hand pressed on the left side of his snout. Alright, maybe anger wasn't that good. What in Oblivion just happened?
Keram-Rei was about to follow her outside, when something grasped his left foot. He looked down, and noticed Ms. Bradford holding onto his boot. Her empty eyes were focused on it, drool falling from her mouth to the floor. He bared his teeth, gave the woman a last look brimming with hatred, and crushed her skull with his right heel. The pulp of brains, bone splinters and blood splattered under his boot in seconds, but some managed to get onto his greaves and chestplate. A little smudge even fell upon his snout.
The Dragonborn wiped it away with a growl of contempt, then exited the Test Room and entered the Monitoring Center.
If it weren't for the security equipment, the weapon racks and computers, it would've been just as dull as the other room - only larger. Rows upon rows of bulky monitors sat on desks in the center of the room. Along the walls, guard posts and reinforced cabinets stood here and there. They were tactically located near the doors and always accompanied by sandbags, prepped in the event the experiment went wrong. Apart from the different types of cover, their situation was completely identical to that of the one in the cell, minus the corpses. The smell of blood had carried there, but so far, it was the only smell to speak of. Everything was tremendously aseptic.
He figured the desks themselves, if overturned, would've been perfect against small arms fire, given their thicker metal coating. These people weren't unprepared, not at all. He thought, amused. And it was true: what could a simple hold guard or mercenary hope to do against these weapons? An undead would've been a challenge, perhaps, but nothing those soldiers couldn't handle.
They, however, had proven to be fatal.
Screaming-Eagle was observing a couple of terminals, then seemed to lose interest and pressed a button. After her brief gesture, the sirens finally stopped howling. Soon the orange light gave way to a calm, white one emitted from neons where the ceiling met the walls. She looked as though nothing had happened, just like when he'd first seen her, some ten minutes ago. Go figure. With a shake of his head, he noticed the elevator door was closed. An emergency lockdown had occurred, and it had been canceled only when she had pressed a terminal's button. So…
I smell life.
"Hey, Screaming-Eagle." Keram-Rei called out loud, his eyes darting around for any possible trace. "I wanted to tell you something." She turned towards him, irritated, and he narrowed his eyes. "Laas Yah Niir." He whispered, and she immediately nodded.
"What is it?" Screaming-Eagle asked, warily scanning their surroundings.
Amongst the thousand or so others, Keram-Rei noticed a bright red aura under a desk on the opposite side of the room and focused on it. He pointed at it, and they both walked around the hall in erratic patterns, choosing different paths and often switching them to give their target the illusion of safety. "You know, I was thinking about the fight we just had. Pathetic resistance, huh?"
"I agree." She said, stopping at two desks from their objective, while he kept walking onwards. The conversation was beyond forced, but it needn't be convincing. "They were surprisingly prepared, but not for mages like ourselves."
"Yes, but you see, there's an even funnier part." The Dragonborn continued, both of them at each side of the desk. He noticed a black boot shivering underneath it. "Thirteen people came in the room, right? I counted twelve bodies."
Without a sound, Keram-Rei dragged the squealing guard in simple security armor out from under the desk. He then grabbed him by the throat and ripped off his screened helmet, just to find the most pathetic excuse of a soldier he'd ever seen. The coward was young, he probably wasn't even fully formed, according to human standards. The boy had greasy, light brown hair, freckles and pimples everywhere on his face, a pair of watery blue eyes and a couple of hairs on his chin. He snorted. Even the first Dawnguard recruits were better than… this.
Fuck me, you're right.
"Yes, Jason Daniels, your corpse is the missing one!" Keram-Rei snarled and bared his teeth as threateningly as possible.
"Don't kill me! Please!" The boy pleaded, crying desperately. He was a bit taller than the Dragonborn, but wiry and extremely thin. "Please, please, please, please! I don't want to die a vi-"
Oh, please… Keram-Rei slapped him, more out of exasperation than anything. "Listen up, we need a couple of things, and you aren't going to utter one word as you carry out these tasks unless we ask you to. Understood?"
The guard, Jason, nodded frantically. His sweaty hair whipped him each time on the cheeks. Screaming-Eagle coughed.
"Any sane person would ask how the fuck you got your place as a Testing Room guard but, alas, there's no time for that." The Dragonborn began, easing his grip a little. "I would love to ask for one of your brand-new weapons, but they look fairly complicated to use. And I don't have enough knowledge about them, nor the time to rip it from your skull." He moved his head accordingly. "So we're going to skip that request. Instead, we want Pip-Boys. And before you ask: no, idiot. DNA lock, we couldn't simply take one from the corpses and expect it to work."
"Bring us two of these Pip-Boy 3000 devices at once!" Screaming-Eagle barked at the boy with a clap and, as Keram-Rei let him go, Jason bolted towards one of the lockers.
He upturned a couple of tables and terminals with extreme ease, faster and stronger than would have appeared possible for a boy like him. Fear goes a long way. The Dragonborn thought, amused, watching the boy rip two devices from their containers and sprint back to their position. He was sweating a little too much for Keram-Rei's liking… he liked to think sweat had stained his groin, too, but the stench brought him back to reality.
Who in Oblivion would promote a boy that pissed himself to that rank?
Screaming-Eagle unceremoniously wrapped the two devices around their wrists, and his fit surprisingly well despite the Stalhrim gauntlet over which it had been placed. Of course, it gave an error message, but she just ran a hand over the Pip-Boys and they lit up, showing a little Argonian in a Vault-Tec jumpsuit holding a thumb up as they started up.
She invents spells on the fly? Now that's something. Don't let her slip away, she's one of a kind.
He almost nodded. I had already figured that out.
Good, now start talking. This is getting weird.
"At this point we'd be done, mind you, but we need something else." Keram-Rei said, shrugging. "You're carrying a forbidden OSD drive filled to the brim with music that wasn't supposed to exist according to prohibitionist laws. And despite deceased Bradford's continuous and nagging rants, you kept it. We'll be taking it, if you don't mind."
That said, the Dragonborn held out a hand, and the boy dropped the small disk into his palm. He carefully put it inside his device and copied every single file in a matter of seconds, then passed it to Screaming-Eagle for her to do the same. When she was done, she gave Jason his OSD back.
"Thank you very much, that's about all we needed." Keram-Rei finished, patting the boy's shoulder. This guy was just a scared kid, he'd been pushed around a little bit too much, in his opinion – and he hadn't helped. Maybe he could help him a bit. "And oh, would you care for a word of advice?"
Jason blinked, then nodded his head. "Uhm… yeah, go on."
"Having a little chat after slaughtering twelve people just doesn't make up for a long-awaited experiment gone wrong, don't you think?" The Dragonborn explained, pouting sympathetically. "I suggest you to… alter this story, go tell the rest of the Vault how you, lonely survivor, managed to best us. And then forced us to leave this place forever, heroically saving all the Vault dwellers from certain death. Who knows, most females would reconsider you under this light, yes?" He winked. "What do you think?"
The boy looked at him for a couple of seconds, astonished. "That's amazing."
Keram-Rei chuckled, and patted his shoulder again. "Glad you like the idea! Come on, say how we slaughtered everyone there, but you waited for us outside and brought us to our knees." He looked around the room. "Perks of not installing cameras here, eh?"
Jason nodded avidly, visibly taking in everything the Argonian was saying.
"Sorry for your friends, although I reckon Major Hunt was the only one who actually wasn't a dick to you." Keram-Rei observed, raising a hand in pacification. "So in that case, no need to thank us for the others. We'll be escaping the Vault, and I doubt we'll ever see again. Farewell, Jason."
"Yeah, well, uhm…" The boy mumbled, bewildered. "Farewell, I guess."
You're always the same. Being this good to everyone isn't going to pay off in the end. Might as well do the opposite.
Screaming-Eagle opened the elevator, and the Dragonborn marched inside, followed by her. The doors closed in front of them, and she pressed the red button marked with a large gear. Instead of focusing on the small metal box they were in, though, Keram-Rei's gaze followed Screaming-Eagle's arm.
He looked at the folds and the little details on the sleeve, all the way up to her shoulder, and he found himself staring at her. He didn't know what wasn't to like about her, to him she looked simply… beautiful. Those dark red scales without a single flaw, those small, graceful horns, those silky smooth and shining feathers, brown as the depths of the earth, and oh those eyes… as red as flames, almost burning…
Pointed right at him.
You know, I've always thought you were an idiot. Now I'm certain.
The Dragonborn coughed, now extremely interested in the filtered air vent's grill above his head. With every steel bar he counted, he hoped not to be killed by one of her devastating spells. Fuck, fuck, fuck! He cursed nervously, and dared look back at her for just one second.
Quite surprisingly, she did the exact same thing as him. Keram-Rei blinked a couple of times, not quite believing his eyes, then focused back on the metal doors. He didn't even know what to think. To be honest he couldn't even think.
She'd caught him staring at her, and his brain had managed to process the whole thing up to that point. Then he'd caught her staring at him, and things started to get strange. Could it be? The Dragonborn managed to think, and a little idiotic smile crept its way across his face. Might she be interested? I… that would be unexpected, sure, and…
Just focus on the ride, idiot.
A couple of dings brought him back to reality. The elevator doors instantly swung open, revealing the Entrance Hall. Keram-Rei promptly walked outside and made a beeline for the wall-mounted console, the one that opened the gear-shaped door before them. He pressed the first two buttons, as the procedure described, then he pulled down the single lever with a little more strength than necessary.
Sirens screamed as the gloomy room was bathed in an orange light and the large mechanism grabbed the blast door and pulled it back. The rod-like 'grabber', as called in the Overseer's memories, revealed it to be at least a meter thick, near-indestructible shape of different metal borides. Built inside a mountain, deep into a cave, with greenhouses and water depuration systems… this place was the perfect fortress.
The two of them stepped outside of the Vault and, with his Pip-Boy, Keram-Rei remotely followed the same procedure to close it once again. Two twists on the large knob, into the 'devices' panel, and then straight into the Vault closing systems with a final push of the upper-right button. Sirens wailed again, and the door closed behind them, leaving them in the barely-lit tunnel ahead. Sunlight managed to reach them, but it was just a pale ray, no more powerful than a candle seen from afar. He gestured for her to follow, and the two started climbing.
He focused on the grey device. It was strange, complicated, and yet so useful… it was much larger than his gauntlet, and slightly heavier. It had a large screen in the middle, with a scrolling wheel to the left, some four levers to the right, and three buttons on the bottom. Apparently, its functionalities could've classified it as a personal assistant. Not to mention the Geiger counter on the top left part of the screen, the Universal Disk Drive and the holotape receiver above the screen, and a wireless receiver to extract information from terminals.
The fact he knew all these things so easily scared him.
For the few silent seconds that followed, the Dragonborn couldn't help but think back to the elevator. Maybe it's all a huge mistake… He thought, biting his lip in uncertainty. Ah, screw it, it's definitely worth a shot. Can't stay alone forever.
"Where are you from, Screaming-Eagle?" Keram-Rei asked to break the ice.
"Gideon." Screaming-Eagle answered. She was being strangely… wary.
"You're a mage, you must come from a noble family, one of those that became rich from trading with the Empire." He pointed out, raising a brow. "There were more than a few in the city, if I remember correctly."
She snorted, indignant. "It's none of your business."
"Spell tomes and magic works are sold at an exorbitant price, especially in our Black Marsh." Keram-Rei continued, bypassing her reaction and hiding a grin. "Either that, or you're a thief."
Screaming-Eagle stared at him, her teeth bared and her eyes narrowed. "Save your breath and do me a favor: speak no further."
Gods, don't do it, don't do it, just-
"Well, as for me, I come from a little village just outside Stormhold." Keram-Rei began, smiling in nostalgia and ignoring two poorly-concealed groans. "My family was poor, but we were happy, all in all. My mother, my father, my little sister Aphatea… she and I had a small group of friends until I was sixteen and she was fourteen. You know, we used to explore caves and pretend to unravel mysteries in long-lost ruins, discover treasures, stuff like that." He sighed, shaking his head with a smile. Good times, good times. "Then, you know how it goes: adventure, all those tales and legends… and so I left home. My sister wouldn't listen to reason, and there she was, stubbornly at my side. Aphatea and I have traveled and fought all over Tamriel in the last nine years. At first we stayed in Black Marsh, then we moved into Elsweyr and Morrowind, and soon we came to Cyrodill, Hammerfell, High Rock, Valewood, the Summerset Isles. We even went as far as to try our luck in Thras and Pyandonea… the only place we hadn't visited was Skyrim, and so we traveled there. I've been living there for two years now."
… Don't tell the story of your life. I've heard it a million times – I've seen it a million times!
"'I'?" She interrupted, interested. "What of your sister?"
The Dragonborn sighed, closing his eyes to cool off. "She's dead."
"Oh." Screaming-Eagle managed, blinking a few times in what might've been confusion, or shock. "I'm… sorry."
"Imperial ambush, neither of us knew we were walking with a traitor such as Ulfric Stormcloak." Keram-Rei continued, the images still vivid in his mind. He'd felt a fist-sized hole in his gut that day, and now it had reopened. "He was a dick to us, sure, but we didn't know it was him until it was too late." He swallowed. "Instead of getting one of Ulfric's lieutenants, an archer missed and got her throat. Before I could heal her, I had three Imperials on me accusing me of treason and 'crimes against Skyrim and its people'." He snorted, narrowing his eyes on the path. "My sister was dying before my very eyes, and they accused us of crimes we had never committed! I would've loved to see their faces when they fought under my command." His grin returned. "I'm a Legate, you know?"
"Wait, it's all horrible, but… you mentioned an Imperial ambush?" Screaming-Eagle asked, perplexed. "And now you're a Legate? Is this some sort of joke to you?"
"We're talking my sister's death, how could I… no, of course I'm not joking!" He growled, scowling. "You didn't seem too interested in this, so why-"
"That's how I got to Skyrim." She completed, scowling at him in return. "And that's my rank within the Imperial Legion. Have you been stalking me?"
"What? I've never seen you before! Look, maybe it was another ambush." Keram-Rei dismissed her, waving her off. "Who knows, perhaps you've mistaken him for one of his doubles. You know, most kings and rebel leaders use them to-"
"I woke up in chains on a cart to Helgen, Ralof of Riverwood in front of me, Lokir of Rorikstead next to him, Ulfric Stormcloak at my side. He was gagged because of the strength of his Thu'um." Screaming-Eagle said without even catching her breath. "Long road, and soon after we reached our destination, Alduin attacked just as my turn on the block came."
By Sithis's dreadful ballsack! She's like you?
The Dragonborn almost choked, and laid his wide eyes on her. This… this wasn't normal. "Alright, now that is weird."
"Hmm, we are not on Nirn anymore." She murmured, shrugging, and rubbed her chin. "Come to think of it, we most definitely come from different planes of existence. It makes sense."
"Wait a second, this means you're the actual Archmage of the College of Winterhold, you haven't bought those anywhere!" He muttered incredulously, looking at the robes and scratching his feathers, when the true revelation hit him. "And if you've been brought to Helgen, where Alduin attacked…"
"… I'm Dragonborn, just like you." She completed, nodding, somewhere between excited and uneasy. "It feels… strange."
It… it wasn't possible. No, impossible, it was simply impossible. A joke. A dream within the dream, and he had to thank that fucker for it. It was just one of his usual tricks. He'd wake up any second now. This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening!
Another world – no, another plane of reality! And there he was, talking with a sexy female Dragonborn from another Skyrim! No, he had to be dreaming this. It… it was a dream, right?
I would be laughing, Keram-Rei. And I'm not.
It made him think about the Overseer's memories yet again, about the fight, about the Vault itself. He couldn't have possibly dreamed something he didn't know... at least now he had an answer to a dumb question.
"So that feeling in my chest… and yours, at this point, it was the reaction to the presence of another Dovahkiin. It was… just like when on the peak of Apocrypha, our first encounter with Miraak." Keram-Rei realized, earning another enthusiastic nod from her. "Hold on, do you think more are going to come through the Vault? As far as I'm concerned, the different realities might be infinite…"
"How did you get here?" She inquired, creasing a brow.
"I pulled a lever in Blackreach." He answered carefully. Strange question to ask, of all the other possible ones.
"Hmm, a button in Nchardak." Screaming-Eagle muttered, then shook her head. "No, I doubt that device exists in every plane of existence." She then retorted, with an ever-so-annoying (and ever-so-irresistible) roll of her eyes. "We would've been crushed under hundreds and hundreds of Dragonborn like us, don't you think? No, I believe they only managed to throw a limited number of them around the various…well, the various manifestations of Skyrim. Gods know how they did it."
"Great, so there may or may not be more people coming, and we're stuck on another world…" He considered, slowly nodding to himself. "One last thing: you said we come from different planes of existence, hence we're both Dragonborn. Does it mean you're… me?"
"That's a good question, actually." She hummed, tapping her fingers on her right horn. When had she started speaking that fast? "We have lived different lives up to Skyrim, but then we both followed the 'Dovahkiin' line, more or less, and the fact we have both fought Miraak further confirms this. Perhaps we've made completely opposite choices, some might be the same, some one of us hasn't even encountered. But you were born in Stormhold, and I was born in Gideon. You're a male, I'm a female. So it would be safe to assume we aren't!" She clapped her hands, now definitely excited. "It's all so… fascinating! So many theories, I could write several tomes about it, and-"
"Then you're going to have to hold on to them until we know how to come back." Keram-Rei stopped her, holding both hands out in an attempt to block her. She'd gotten pretty talkative now, and he wasn't exactly in the mood for talking. "I'd read them, sure, but we could rather talk about these theories of yours. Right now, I want you focused on this whole situation."
"Yes, you're right… sorry." She apologized as they reached the mouth of the cave. She somewhat stiffened back to her original posture.
Another step, and there before them was the scorching Mojave Desert. An endless expanse of burning sand and rock. Their elevated position gave them an excellent view of the absolute nothing all around them. The unforgiving sun lazily rose up into the clear skies as they watched, not even a cloud filtering its rays.
Great, couldn't we get stranded in… what, a jungle? Or a marsh? Too much to ask? You're bad even at accidents.
"What now?" Screaming-Eagle asked, masking what had to be uncertainty with irritation.
"We aren't too far from the Hoover Dam." Keram-Rei calmly remarked. He looked first at the blistering plains outstretched in front of them, then at his Pip-Boy's map. "From here, former Arizona, we might get into former Nevada pretty easily. Las Vegas was barely hit during the Great War, right? We might as well try that. Or Boulder City, too. They're the closest settlements I can think of."
"Good places to start." She agreed with a nod, and just then he noticed clearly the exact shade of red of her scales, how the light played over them... he focused back on her words. "... Avoid crossing the Dam directly, though. It was protected from several attacks. If it happened to be still operational…"
"Who wouldn't want electricity in a post-apocalyptic world?" He completed, grinning although he'd missed half of the sentence. "We'll find another way to get across the river, or we could turn invisible at some point to cross it safely. The Dam had roads, after all. But we must stay silent. Until then, Arvak?"
"Arvak." She repeated with a curt nod, clenching her right fist just as he clenched his. None of them needed particular focus for it.
Two very, very close neighs came from behind him, and something the size and form of a horse headbutted his back. Keram-Rei turned, and there was Arvak, his trusty Soul Cairn steed. Black bones, purple fire, stubborn as Oblivion, and loyal like no other horse.
Arvak nuzzled Keram-Rei's feathers, causing him to laugh. "Yeah, I've missed you too, Arvak."
Somewhere at his side, Screaming-Eagle cleared her throat. "Would you care to move? I need to cast our invisibility."